


give me good and pure

by owlvsdove



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, basically the whole team - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6357988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlvsdove/pseuds/owlvsdove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, Grant Ward survives Maveth, and that changes things for the team. Especially Jemma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	give me good and pure

**Author's Note:**

> basically the idea that ward survives his body being used by maveth thanks to jemma and then he's just sort of there with shield and it's weird but then it's okay
> 
> basically the longest most boring set up to a single kiss in all of history
> 
> unbetaed so be v gentle

 

“It’s so hard to believe this is really happening.”

It comes out of Jemma as a whisper. She and Daisy stare into the medpod, going unnoticed by its occupant. He’s been in a medically induced-coma for a few days, and soon they’ll lift him out of it. See if there’s anything left there to hate.

“He went from agent to friend to traitor to enemy to monster to... _this_ ,” Daisy summarizes, trying to make sense of it. “He shouldn’t have even survived whatever Maveth did to him.”

“But he did. He survived.” Jemma feels dumbstruck. “He always survives.”

She doesn’t really know how she’s supposed to feel about this.

 

 

 

When he wakes, the light above him flares and blinds him. He can’t focus until something—someone—comes into view, blocks the harshness, haloed in light.

“Hey,” he slurs, starting to smile. Lightness, absurd and buoyant, rises within him.

She looks confused. A hand covered in wires and hooked to an IV enters his field of vision, strokes her cheek. It takes him a moment to realize it’s his.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. Just tensely, hesitantly waits.

“You’re in trouble, Jemma,” he mumbles. “It wants to hurt you.”

“I know, Ward,” she says finally.

All at once the light seems to fade. He blinks in confusion as a sudden and intense pain overtakes his temples. Simmons is speaking to someone rapidly, but he can’t understand her over all the noise. His head throbs. His hand falls away from her face—why was he touching her anyway?—while something gets injected into his IV, and he drops away from consciousness, a cacophony of cloying voices fading into obscurity.

 

 

 

“What do you remember?”

Grant starts slowly. “I remember...It. All of It’s actions and decisions, It’s thoughts. And not being able to do a thing to stop it.”

“You wanted to stop it?” Coulson clarifies. It’s a cruel question, one that implies Grant has absolutely no reason or self-respect at all.

“I was never fully on board with Malick’s...interest in Maveth.” He takes a breath. “Any interest I did have disappeared once it turned me into a puppet.”

“But you have intel,” Coulson says. “Information we could use to beat it.”

“You can’t beat it,” Ward hears himself say. “It’s impossible. It’s going to destroy this world, and we’re all going to die trying to stop it.”

Simmons has been leaning against the wall behind where Coulson sits, monitoring his vitals, trying to blend into it. “We _can_ beat it,” she murmurs to Coulson.

Ward addresses her: “I’m the voice of doom, remember?”

Coulson looks between them, catches the stricken expression on Jemma’s face.

“What did you just say?” she breathes.

Suddenly, Grant’s not sure.

 

 

 

May’s the one that finds her sitting on the floor in the dark of the empty gym, squeezing herself tight.

“It’s kind of amazing, if you think about it,” Jemma tells her, but her voice sounds flat and strange. “Maveth carries fragments of its victims’ consciousnesses to each new host. Ward has centuries of experiences and knowledge in his head now.”

May sits down next to her on the floor, much closer than she would usually.

“I’m sorry, Jemma,” she says quietly.

Jemma leans her head on May’s shoulder and cries for a very long time.

 

 

 

Jemma corners him in the hallway before she goes to bed a few nights later. Her hands are clenched in tight little fists that seem to have no aim.

“I just need to ask if you know.”

His brow rises.

“Was it painful when he died?”

He can tell that she hates herself for asking. Hates. And he knows he can’t let her down gently, not when some new part of him so badly craves her trust. Not when it feels like there’s so much at stake in this one moment.

“His leg hurt the worst.” His voice comes out raspier than expected. “Maveth latched on and tore through it. He bled out for a while before It ended it.”

She’s not crying, but she’s nodding minutely, eyes trained on him, like she knew it was true that he suffered. Like she could feel it happening even now.

“I’m sorry,” he offers quietly. It is not enough.

“Thank you,” she says simply. And disappears down the hall and into her bedroom.

He watches as she goes.

 

 

 

Now he hovers around the lab.

He feels like he can barely remember what he did before, although that’s not really true. He has the memories. They just feel...far. While Jemma and Fitz worked in the lab on the Bus, he used to do research for the case or catch up on sleep or train Skye or workout, clean the weapons closet or eat something or take a shift in the cockpit.

Now he hovers.

Despite everything that’s happened, Fitz and Simmons still putter around the lab, still acting like Fitz and Simmons.

Not that there aren’t differences. Fitz’s hands shake on occasion. Or he stutters. Jemma is overwhelmed for a moment and has to close her eyes. A sound startles them both. They bicker less. Talk over each other less. Talk in unison less.

But it’s not bad. And sometimes Ward just sits on a stool out of the way, watching.

Fitz, honestly, is a lot less disturbed by his presence than he was expecting. This probably has to do with the way Jemma maneuvers around the lab, always between the two of them, like she’s trying to shield Fitz from danger.

Or shield Ward from hate. 

It makes his heart constrict in a way that’s entirely too familiar. He wonders for a moment which voice in his head feels so strongly.

Still, as usual, Fitz focuses on his work and the mission and Jemma.

Jemma focuses on her work and the mission and Fitz. And Skye and Bobbi and May. And the shaking of her own hands. And her breath. And him.

“Is there not one voice in your head that can contribute to this conversation?”

All at once he startles into focus. Jemma, asking him a question. Jemma, hand on her hip, head cocked, trying to breathe levity into her and Fitz’s argument.

“They were warriors,” he points out. This is the most casually that any of them have ever discussed his side effect. “They sent the toughest men as sacrifices, in the hopes that they might come back victorious.” His speaking goes stilted and proper, one of the other voices popping up.

“Shouldn’t the toughest be the smartest?” Jemma ponders.

“Only you would say that,” Ward says. Perhaps a touch too fondly, because Fitz coughs.

“To be fair, the smartest one did escape,” Fitz adds. Not as a compliment to Jemma, but as an opposition to Ward.

Jemma is smug for a small moment. And then she is not.

“Will was an astronaut.”

And then there are no more smiles in the room.

“He was a scientist.”

All of a sudden, Ward realizes: the entire conversation has been a test. She...manipulated him. And he hadn’t even noticed. She wants to know how much of Will is still inside him.

How much worth Ward has.

He keeps his voice as light as humanly possible. “Unfortunately for Daniels, his memories are trapped in someone who got a C in freshman biology.”

“Oh, come on, Ward.” And her eyes are so focused on him, it’s like she’s hoping they’ll crack him open. “We all know you didn’t go to high school.”

And the conversation is over.

 

 

 

It doesn’t take long for people to get antsy.

Jemma knew this would come, knew it was coming like a freight train towards them and that she’d be the only one to hold her hands up and try to stop it in its tracks. Stupid, senseless. Brave but senseless.

For Will. For the shadow of Will.

“We can’t control him.”

“He did kidnap me. And he destroyed my leg.”

“All he’s done since day one is lie to us.”

“He left me and Jemma at the bottom of the ocean. He left us to die.”

“Jemma?”

“We can’t let him be on the team. We can’t trust him to have our backs.”

“ _Jemma_!”

Finally, Jemma looks up.

Coulson continues: “You haven’t said anything yet.”

She struggles for a moment. Murmurs through trembling lips. Ashamed. “I want to argue but I don’t have a leg to stand on.”

“Simmons,” Lance pleads.

“What are we to do?” she bursts suddenly. “Leave him to rot like last time? Set him free? _Kill_ him? He has information we can use to stop Maveth and that’s the _only_ thing that matters now!”

Everyone is quiet. Jemma’s so ashamed she can’t even look in May’s direction. In anyone’s.

“Simmons,” Coulson says quietly. “I once made you responsible for one of our agents. You vouched for him to get him a spot on the team.”

She closes her eyes. She doesn’t need to think about Trip right now.

“Do you really want that responsibility again?”

“Coulson!” May objects, sharply and immediately.

“Fine,” Jemma says without thinking, heart pounding in terror. “He’s my responsibility.”

“No,” Daisy barks suddenly. She, too, has been strangely quiet during this meeting. “Simmons, how can you possibly be okay with this? What happens when he gets close to you?” she asks, electric, fearsome. “What happens when he hurts you?”

Jemma has no answer to that. She meant it when she said she didn’t have a leg to stand on.

“He won’t hurt Jemma,” Fitz says.

The room turns to him.

“He won’t. I can make sure that he won’t,” he amends.

“How?” Coulson asks.

Fitz looks at Jemma significantly, and once she figures out what he’s thinking of she starts to shake her head. “No.”

“We have a device—”

“It’s untested and dangerous!” Jemma hisses.

“We have a device,” Fitz says to Coulson. “An implant into the chest cavity. You put one in the person you want to control—”

“Fitz!”

“And one in the controller. If the captor’s vitals start to weaken or their heart stops, the captive goes into cardiac arrest. It’s good incentive to keep someone alive.”

“And we haven’t figured out a way to prevent short-circuiting!” Jemma protests. “He could claw it out of his own chest. An EMP could disable it. It could malfunction and _kill_ both of us.”

“I can get around those problems!” Fitz argues.

“Stop.”

“It’s inhumane. I will not consent to a surgery—”

“ _Stop_.”

It’s Ward. Ward’s in the doorway. He must’ve heard them arguing. Or maybe he was listening to the entire conversation. Or maybe Coulson had him come in to see just this, a veiled threat.

“I get the point,” he says, low and serious. “If she dies, I die.”

And he turns hard out of the room.

And there is only silence.

 

 

 

For now, they let him out during the day—although always under supervision—but they lock him in the Vault at night.

It feels strange, letting Bobbi or Lance or Mack take him by the arm and lead him down to prison every night. Reminds her of the time before she went to HYDRA, when Fitz was in the hospital. When she’d watch the feed from the Vault and bang her head against the wall. When he threatened his own life and she’d have to stitch pieces of him back together.

She’s not immune to the panic. She lies awake every goddamn night, terrified that he’ll betray them again. It’s been a long time since the Bus, and she’s not sure if the hope she’s grasping at inside of him is even there anymore. He’s a liar and manipulator and a killer and there shouldn’t be a reason for her to trust him.

She wants to defy the universe. _Prove them wrong, prove them wrong._ But she’ll never know for sure.

Almost without realizing, she’s left her bed, snuck down the labyrinthine hallways to the Vault.

She’s has to try to put her demons to rest.

The biometric scanner will only open if a qualified team member’s hand is on it, so Ward will have to forcibly remove it from her body to get out of the basement. To get to the rest of the team. He’s been in and out of there enough times that he must have noticed. If he has a plan to escape…

Well. The whole base is about to find out.

If not?

Then maybe she’ll be able to sleep.

“Ward,” she whispers into the dark.

An auxiliary light turns on, triggered by her motion on the stairs, but he’s still cast in blackness.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Did I wake you?”

“No. Hadn’t fallen asleep yet.”

“May I—?”

“Sure.”

She finds her way down the stairs and towards the center console, flickering on a few lights. And now that she can finally see him, she readies herself. Snaps back into whatever drive brought her down here so late, so desperate.

She lets the force field down.

Ward doesn’t make any movements, just raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong, Simmons?”

She can’t make the words come yet.

“Is something happening upstairs?”

She shakes her head.

Now he makes a movement forward. It’s not sinister - but it never did seem to be before. The feeling that flickers over his face reads as concern.

Still, he stops at the edge of the yellow line on the ground, waiting for the barrier to be snapped back into place.

“Say something,” he urges.

“If you’re going to hurt us, why not do it now?” The words come out of her fast and anxious.

His brow furrows.

She tosses the tablet aside, letting it clatter on the lone chair in the room. He doesn’t startle, but he’s growing more and more concerned, she can see it. Maybe it’s fake, maybe it’s fake. Maybe it’s real.

“You’re supposed to be able to judge people by what they do, not what they say,” she says slowly. “But you haven’t done or said anything since you got back that made me worry that you were going to hurt us again.”

“I’m...sorry?” Of course he would be flip right now. “I’m sorry, Jemma. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want to be able to trust you. I want to be able to feel good about being responsible for you. But I can’t get past the idea that I don’t know what’s real anymore. That I can’t tell the difference.”

His eyebrows raise. It must mean something different to him than it does to her. Doesn’t matter. She’s breaking. She can feel it.

“So if you’re going to do something to us, you might as well do it now. Save us both some time.” And suddenly she’s right in front of him, right on the line that’s supposed to keep him at bay. “I know you could kill me right now if you wanted to. I know you’d find a way upstairs and you’d fight through everyone else to get out. So why don’t you?”

He looks stricken.

“Because I want to take out that _thing_ that used me,” he growls, bristling with rage. And that’s the Ward she knows. But he doesn’t stop talking. “And because I don’t want to hurt you.”

How can she believe it, though? It was only a couple months ago that he was torturing her for information. Their standoff was fierce and it was painful. Before that he sacrificed Andrew. And then a few months before that he’d held Bobbi captive, destroyed her knee. And the tragedy before that, and the one before that, and the one before that, and—

She believes him. She has no idea why or how it could possibly be true. But she believes him.

She takes a step back from him, looks away, unclenches her fists. In the corner of her eye, she sees him wipe his face.

“Don’t ruin this,” Jemma says quietly after a minute. She finds his eyes again. “You can be here again, Ward. You can be one of us. You can fix all of it.”

It takes Ward a long time to respond. When he does, his voice rasps and breaks. “You know I can’t.”

She surges forward, one of her hands fisting his collar.

“You have to _try_.”

 

 

 

He does try.

Fitz is the first step. He seems to be the one who is most close to the idea. Jemma’s influence, he assumes.

Grant waits until the lab is a little more deserted; Jemma excuses herself to the kitchen, and it’s late anyway, so many of the techs have retired for the night.

Truthfully, he’s not sure how to approach it. Ward has dozens of methods that will get people on his side, buzzwords, body language cues, linguistic tricks. But he can’t use those here. Even if they could pass Fitz’s defenses, which are high and thorough and endlessly cautious, it wouldn’t feel right.

It’s about what he feels, now.

And he wants to tell the truth.

“Fitz,” Grant speaks. He hasn’t said much today, so his voice is dry. “I know this doesn’t mean much, but I just want to say—”

“You’re sorry,” Fitz says without looking up.

He’s silent a beat too long, taken aback. “Yes.”

“Jemma warned me that you would apologize.”

Again, he’s silent for too long. “ _I_ didn’t even know if I was going to apologize.”

Now Fitz looks up, wounded little smile gracing his face. “We both know that if Jemma asks you to do something, you’re going to do it.”

Grant swallows. “Do we know that?”

“Come on, Ward. Something’s different.” He means with the way Grant sits here, watches her all day, hangs on her words. “I don’t know if it’s Will, I don’t know if it’s you, but I wasn’t lying before. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you will not harm her. At least not physically.”

He’s stunned. Truly. And leave it to Fitz to spell it the fuck out, leaving no room for shadows. Exposed.

“I am sorry, you know,” Ward says after a long moment. He can’t confirm or deny anything because he’s trying not to lie.

“Good,” Fitz replies. It’s not even cruel. It’s more like a compliment.

 

 

 

In the morning, Jemma greets him with a satisfied smile. Grant hates her for it.

 

 

 

At a certain point, it becomes commonplace for Grant to observe people in the training room.

It probably seems nefarious, but really it’s just something to do. No one is going to ask him to spar, nor would they be comfortable with him working out near them. But he can peek in, blend into the wall for a while. At least to see what they’re working with.

One morning, he finds the women in the training room.

Bobbi steps back, chest heaving, having just fought. Now Daisy and Jemma are up to spar, apparent from their readying stances. They’re pulling punches, but Grant still feels a weird tug at his chest.

He made them feral. 

Well, maybe that’s taking too much credit. Skye—Daisy was always a wilder thing, something burning inside her with the desire for change. And Jemma was always a lot braver, a lot stronger, and a lot meaner than she looked. It’s how she gets away with so much.

But even though HYDRA was a meticulously planned, decades-long scheme that he was just a miniscule part of, well. It was still his fault. To them, it’s his fault.

And that made them like this.

Watching Jemma struggle and fight with Daisy isn’t fun. It isn’t entertaining, and it doesn’t even make him feel better about her or Fitz’s positions in the field. It just makes him sick.

In a flash of swiftness, Daisy has Jemma on her back, and she struggles to gain back equal footing.

Grant can’t help himself, he moves forward from the doorway a bit. Daisy must read him as a threat in the corner of her eye because she gets distracted, head swinging away from her captive; and then Jemma has the advantage, leveraging Daisy’s inattention and weight against her, flipping them so she’s in control, pale hand to Daisy’s neck.

May calls the match finished. Daisy goes brushing past Ward and out the door before anyone can say a word.

 

 

 

May makes Jemma happy, Grant thinks. May is probably the best person to choose next, but he and May have their own history.

Weirdly, May approaches him first.

“You need to train.”

She’s right. What used to be a daily necessity has fallen by the wayside, first thanks to the spontaneity of nefarious evil-doing, then because his body was occupied by an alien, and now because he’s rather committed to sitting in the lab and not moving. May must’ve noticed him hovering.

She tosses a roll of boxing tape at him, turns and gives absolutely no room for argument. Fitz doesn’t look up, but Jemma implores him silently, shoos him with her hands.

The first day, she puts him through the paces. It’s not hard to reacclimate to long-held habits, but she gives him the steadiness of constant instruction, and he accepts it as comforting.

The second day they spar. After the eleventh time she slams him down on his back, he asks. “Are you trying to remind me that you can kill me?”

“I don’t have to remind you. You already know,” she replies simply.

The third day, Jemma appears next to him in the gym in workout clothes.

“No,” he says automatically.

“You don’t get a say in this,” May says.

Jemma readies herself.

Again, it’s not even proper sparring—May instructs them both to pull their punches, and Jemma only gets overexcited and actually punches him once, a good and lasting blow to his stomach. Jemma’s progressed rather far. Grant wonders again at what point in the string of tragedies she’s lived through that Jemma took up this practice.

Once—but a proud sort of once—she gets him on his back, chest heaving, hair falling out of her ponytail and brushing his chest. Her little hands, skin broken over the knuckles, hold down his arms; and her hips shift over his waist.

No one says anything for a long moment.

Then: “Well done, Simmons.”

Her concentration breaks, and May helps her up.

Grant takes an extra second on the mat.

 

 

 

It seems that Ward has displaced Bobbi.

Bobbi’s the one that lingers in the lab too long. He thought it was due to her distrust of him, but lately it seems more and more obvious: she loves Fitz and Jemma. She loves the lab. She loves to be with them there. And since they’ve become close, Bobbi has been the one in the lab, keeping them grounded and lending a hand.

But now Bobbi won’t be in the same room as him. And since Jemma keeps Ward close to her, Bobbi has made herself relatively scarce.

Maybe Jemma’s getting better at reading his face, because she leans over to him one day after Bobbi walks away.

“She could be next, you know.”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “I shot her.”

“May shot Lance, and they’re friends,” she says. “Well, not friends. Friendly?”

“It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s not. But you said you would try.”

“I have been!” He promises.

“You and Fitz had a talk, and as soon as I beat you May stopped holding a grudge. But they were easy.”

“Easy?” He protests, bewildered.

“Bobbi’s wounds are fresh. Not literally, obviously. Her knee has healed quite well, considering. But emotionally.”

“She hates me. That’s not gonna stop just because I apologize.”

“No, of course not,” Jemma says. And that surprises him. “But it’s what you have to do.”

 

 

 

“So...I don’t have to forgive Ward, right?”

Jemma looks up from her sandwich. “What?”

“He apologized to me today. Do I _have_ to forgive him?” Bobbi asks again.

“Of course not,” Jemma responds, bewildered. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“You won’t get mad?”

“Why would I get mad?”

Bobbi looks regretful now. She sits down across the table from Jemma. “I get that he’s become your...pet project. I don’t want to step on that, I just can’t deal with it right now.”

Jemma lets her hand rest on Bobbi’s. “Of course, that’s fine,” she assures her. “Also, he’s not my project. I’m just trying to help this go as easily as possible. So we can stop Maveth.”

“Right,” Bobbi says. “Oh, by the way. He also apologized to Hunter. It did not go well.”

Jemma grimaces.

 

 

 

“I can’t believe you let him punch you,” Jemma mutters, fingertips checking over the bruise forming on his cheekbone.

“I deserved it,” Grant replies. “Besides, Hunter doesn’t seem to have a lot in his life. He needed this.”

“Hey, Lance is a friend of mine,” Jemma says. Then she thinks. “But you’re not wrong.”

Grant is overwhelmingly relieved that she doesn’t comment on him deserving it.

 

 

 

Mack approaches him in the bathroom of all places. “I heard you let Lance punch you.”

“I didn’t let him, he—”

“You have inches and pounds on him, Ward. You let him.”

Grant decides to say nothing to this.

“I know you’re on the apology tour. And I definitely don’t trust you. But fine. You’re not a pariah. Just remember I have inches and pounds on you.”

Grant nods in understanding.

And that’s that.

 

 

 

They eat dinner together now.

Jemma sort of drags him along for it. She’s found that Ward eats in quite a utilitarian manner—balanced, healthy, simple. She doesn’t cook for him, partly because she has no desire to and partly because she knows how it’ll look. But they fix themselves something side-by-side and no one tries to bother them as they sit next to each other and eat.

And talk.

It’s the talking that confuses her most. She and Ward have talked before, thousands of times in countless manners. But sometimes he just props his head on his hand and listens to her. He doesn’t seem bored, just nodding thoughtfully at the parts she knows he can understand. It seems like patience, or maybe a sweet sort of enjoyment.

His days are not filled with much, she knows this. Mid-morning, he goes to spar with May. Then he takes a shower and fixes himself lunch. Then he rejoins her and Fitz in the lab, sitting in his spot and commenting whenever appropriate on whatever they’re working on. Sometimes people come in and out, sometimes they talk to him and sometimes they ignore him completely. Sometimes the rest of the team goes on missions, but never him. Not yet.

But Jemma notes that he does respond when she asks a question about his day. He’ll tell her who won the sparring contest (May, always) or what he’s reading (Rumi, thanks to one of the ghosts in his head) or, once, what he dreamt about (the dog he had as a kid).

It just feels like he wants to share with her.

And she doesn’t know where that desire comes from. But she knows it’s keeping her focus.

And that’s probably not a good thing.

 

 

 

 “Suit up, Ward,” May says one day, walking into the lab briskly. “We need all the muscle we can get.”

“Is it Maveth?” Jemma jumps in, on high alert already. She’s angled her body slightly so that she’s between Ward and May.

“No. A particularly violent Inhuman. Daisy wants to take him in but Coulson’s not sure we’ll be able to. You’ve got fifteen,” May says, putting Ward on the clock.

Ward stands up, starts to head down the hall, but after a moment he realizes that Jemma’s still at his elbow.

“Why are you following me?”

“It has nothing to do with Maveth,” she says, stressing some syllables like it’s significant.

“May said that already.”

“They’re trusting you with something else,” Jemma pushes.

Grant keeps to himself the notion that perhaps they want him there so that if the Inhuman kills someone, it can be him.

“If you do this well, it’ll just make it easier for them to accept you,” she continues.

He stops dead in front of tac gear storage. “Why do you want them to accept me so badly?”

She doesn’t have an answer. Or if she does, she keeps it to herself.

“Nothing’s going back to normal,” he continues. “There’s no normal to go back to.”

“I know, trust me,” she says, voice hard. “I’m just trying to help.”

He deflates. For some reason, he’s given her something to hope for, something to look at positively. He can’t lash out. And he doesn’t _want_ to lash out.

“I know,” he says quietly. “Thank you.”

There’s a long bubble of silence while they both try to settle themselves.

“You need to get ready,” she says.

But she doesn’t move.

“Are you going to watch me change?” he challenges.

She stares at him. Then: “Eleven minutes.” And she walks quickly away.

 

 

 

“How’d it go?”

Jemma can’t help herself. She asks May as soon as she can get her out of earshot of the others.

“The op was a success. Not a single wrong step. And Daisy didn’t try to kill him.”

Jemma preens. May rolls her eyes.

“But Ward’s been injured.”

The preening stops.

 

 

 

“Aren’t their other med techs that do this now?” Ward asks.

Jemma shushes him. It only feels right for her to patch him up. Like old times.

“Bruised ribs. Again.”

“That’s your professional, medical opinion?” he taunts.

“If you’d like a second opinion, I could let Lincoln take a look at you,” she says, faux-sweetly. Lincoln looks up, lets sparks fly between his hands threateningly.

Ward rolls his eyes.

It’s strange, because his entire chest plate should be crushed, his ribs cracked beyond repair. Maveth fixed him. Saved him. And here he is, as whole-looking as always. Ward always falls into this trap, someone helping him and hurting him at the same time.

“I think I’m good, Jemma,” Ward says. It sounds so much like Will, it knocks the air out of her.

She smiles weakly and retreats.

 

 

 

She’s done a rather good job of keeping it from Ward, she thinks.

Jemma knows that Daisy loves her. Jemma knows that she and Daisy are best friends. But they aren’t speaking at the moment.

She can’t blame Daisy for it, either. For some inexplicable reason, she’s been friendly with Daisy’s betrayer ex. There’s too much history. Too much hurt and bad blood.

May doesn’t usually let them contact spar, mostly because Daisy is so far ahead of Jemma. But this morning, things are different.

“I’m sick of this,” May says. “You’re going to fight this out like women.”

Daisy seethes.

“No powers. Don’t pull your punches.”

Both women nod.

May signals them to start, and Daisy tears after Jemma, aiming a blow to the face that she dodges easily. Jemma manages to knock her in the stomach, but it doesn’t take much for Daisy to recover, kicking Jemma back.

They grapple for a long time, but somewhere along the line, despite her fierceness, despite her superior training, Daisy gets distracted. Again. Jemma finds herself above her friend, landing a punch to her face. And without thinking, Daisy’s powers come out, blowing Jemma impossibly high towards the ceiling and then hurtling back towards the ground.

Jemma feels herself crumple. Before she passes out, she sees that Ward has found them, watching with strangled emotion.

 

 

 

The first thing Jemma hears is crying, shallow huffs of air leaving lungs. It sounds like Daisy, but she can’t open her eyes to be sure.

“It’s just a concussion,” May says next. “She didn’t even break any bones. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine!” Daisy argues. “I hurt her.”

“Because I told you to,” May hisses.

“I did exactly what I was afraid he would do. I _hurt her_.”

Jemma doesn’t hear anything else before she falls back to sleep.

 

 

 

Once Jemma wakes up properly, she takes Daisy by the hand, leads her into Daisy’s room, and locks the door behind them.

They do not emerge for a very long time.

Jemma gets several _are you okay_ texts, mostly from Fitz, but she doesn’t respond to any of them.

“We need to fight this out like women,” she says when the door clicks shut.

And they do.

 

 

 

 Jemma ends up sleeping in Daisy’s room—it’s her punishment to wake up the concussed every hour on the hour, and Daisy takes it in stride—so she’s rather bedraggled when the pair of them emerge for coffee and food.

Jemma yelps as she almost trips over Lance, grabbing Daisy’s arm. She physically startles at the sight of their entire team dozing outside of Daisy’s bedroom door, waiting to see what became of the two of them.

All of them dozing, except of course Ward, who’s sitting against the far wall with his eyes wide open and on them.

Daisy must see where Jemma’s gaze falls, because she follows and lets out a deep sigh.

“Fine,” she growls to Ward. “Let’s go get breakfast.”

Daisy kicks Lincoln awake, commands him to make them pancakes, and saunters forward towards the kitchen.

Jemma naturally falls in step with Ward.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly.

“Of course I am,” she says. “I was bound to get a concussion at some point.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She knows that, obviously, but she truly isn’t interested in ruining her own mood. “Everything’s been taken care of.”

“I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds like bullshit,” he says.

She shrugs. “Take it however you want.”

“You can’t make Daisy be my friend, Jemma. And I don’t want you two to fight because of me.”

He’s using her first name again and it suckers her right in the stomach. She stops walking and turns to look him dead in the eye.

“We had our own issues to discuss, alright? Not everything’s about _Grant Ward_.”

And before he can argue, she leaves him in the dust.

 

 

 

“You don’t talk about him much,” Ward says suddenly during one of their dinners.

Not true. Jemma talks about Will in her head all the time. But no one wants to hear her sadness, not when every single one of them has so much weighing on them too, all the people they’ve lost.

Frustratingly, devastatingly, Will is just another lost person.

Grant is staring into his sandwich like he’s ashamed of himself for asking.

“There’s not much to talk about, I guess,” she murmurs, which feels untrue. So she continues: “We were stranded. We fell in love. He died so I could escape.”

It must sound matter-of-fact. But it’s a wound that never stops burning; if her voice doesn’t stay steady she’ll lose herself again.

He seems to struggle for a moment, quiet for a long time.

“I’m losing their voices,” he says.

She blinks. “What?”

“It used to be so loud, their voices reacting to things, their memories. But it seems to be fading.”

“Oh,” she says. “That’s good.”

He doesn’t say anything, so she puts a hand on his arm.

“Don’t you want your head back?” she asks.

“Don’t you want Will to stay?” he shoots back.

She takes a long moment to herself. Then: “Will’s not here, Ward. He never was. I didn’t bring him home, and neither did you.”

She says it very carefully, like a mantra, because it’s something she’s just barely come to terms with. Ward looks at her for a very long time—far too long to be comfortable, so she breaks.

“Why are you being so weird?”

He snaps out of it, snorting. “You’re incredible, Simmons.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment.”

 

 

 

“I need to talk to you.”

Daisy keeps walking, so he falls in step with her. “You know traditionally that does _not_ go well for you.”

“I know.”

“What do you want?” she asks.

“It’s about Jemma.”

“Obviously,” Daisy says pointedly.

Grant ignores that. “She blames herself for Will’s death.”

“Yeah, she does,” Daisy murmurs. “What’s your question?”

“Shouldn’t we tell her that it isn’t her fault?” he asks.

Daisy stops now.

“What do you think we’ve been doing this whole time?” She doesn’t even sound angry, just tired. So, so tired. “It’s just the way she is, Ward. It’s the way she’s always been. No matter how much or how little she was involved in something, she always thinks there’s some other choice she could’ve made that would’ve saved us all.”

That hurts to hear, a razor blade stuck in his gut. Stuck, and not coming out. “I just want to help her,” he says. It comes out stilted and strange. He’s done more admitting to things in the last few months than he has in his entire life, and every time feels like the first. The rawness of openly caring. “Like she helps me.”

Daisy’s face changes. “I know that,” she nods. “We all know that.” She says it like it’s significant.

God, how obvious has he become?

“What do I do?” he asks.

“Do what we all do,” Daisy replies. “Keep telling her it’s not her fault. And hope she believes it.”

 

 

 

Fitz runs tech from the plane. Coulson stays with him, overseeing from above, because he’s been needed for a lot of undercover work lately, and the less anyone sees his face the better. That leaves the rest of them on the ground. Including Simmons.

While May’s landing the jet, while they’re jogging through the forest, when they break off into teams, Ward keeps a mantra going in his head: _she’s capable she’s capable she’s capable she’s capable._

Because he’s not trying to be a dick. He doesn’t want to belittle her or think she hasn’t changed in the last few years. That’s not right. But when you care about someone, you fear for them.

And he does care about her.

He’s being a miserable little pissbaby about it, too. Being reawoken under SHIELD’s thumb might’ve been a lot easier if he didn’t wake up with feelings about her. And the longer he has them, the more he realizes that they don’t just belong to some errant ghost. They’re Grant’s.

And the longer he feels for her, the more he realizes that he never stopped caring about any of them. He talked a big game for a long time, but he’s always been able to talk a big game, no matter what. It doesn’t change what’s really there.

Jemma looked him dead in the eye and told him to try and fix this. And he has tried.

But the trying never stops.

And that includes right now, watching over her as she tries to identify a dangerous particulate in an active crime scene. Malick’s goons are on the loose, as well as a handful of Inhumans, all keeping the team busy.

“And I’m here stuck with you,” Ward finishes.

“Boo hoo,” Simmons jeers. “I’m good company!”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I’m just saying, there’s a distinct possibility that I’m not gonna get to punch anyone today.”

“I’m sorry your bloodlust is going unquenched.”

“Thank you for acknowledging my feelings,” he responds primly. It gets a grin out of her, just like he wanted.

And then the door bursts open and everything goes to hell.

Jemma was already crouched over, and Grant was already standing, so he just maneuvers a step over to bodily protect her as they get shot at from faceless men. He lays down enough cover fire that evil goes scattering, but they’re outgunned and outnumbered, and there’s only so long that he can shoot before he’s gonna run out of ammo and they’re going to advance. And while he’s thinking this and shooting and ducking, Jemma pushes him bodily out of the way of a shoulder shot that misses him by a hair and fires at someone, hitting them square in the chest.

He looks back. She has her samples collected and her case packed up and her gun out. And why is he surprised? She’s capable.

 

 

 

It’s a drinking sort of night.

To be honest, she can’t pinpoint why anymore. Sometimes the need to drown herself just comes stronger than usual.

“We’re getting so close, Grant,” she says quietly.

“To what?”

She remembers that she’s spoken out of thin air. “To It. To Maveth.”

“It’s not going to hurt you again, Jemma.” He sounds so sure. And if that was what she’s worried about, she would try to believe him.

“I don’t care if It hurts me,” she says. There’s even a little smile on her face. “I just want It destroyed.”

“We’re going to get It,” Ward says. “This won’t last forever. We’ll find It’s weaknesses and we’ll end this.”

“It has to die,” she repeats. “For Will. For me, for you.”

She know she must sound miserable, possibly deranged, but she’s so _tired_. Hell and back and hell and back, and coming _back_ doesn’t even feel good anymore. Her demons may never settle.

She needs this.

“Just don’t do anything stupid. Please,” he says. “You’re not in this by yourself.”

She almost smiles. “I never do anything stupid.”

He gives her a laugh.

 

 

 

Jemma is strong, but that doesn’t mean she never breaks.

Malick and the monster just barely slipped out of their grasp today. And May and Lance both got a little more than banged up in the process. And Jemma is shaking, Jemma is kicking herself. Jemma is crumbling.

She excuses herself as soon as debrief is over. Grant just barely catches her slipping into her bedroom, and his first thought is to give her space.

But then he ignores that instinct and follows her in.

Shaking, kicking herself, crumbling. He lays a hand on her back and the tears come forward, hand to her mouth like that might hold everything in.  She turns, presses her face to his chest and her arms go around him, squeezing like a vice. And he can’t help but squeeze her back. It’s so rare for her to touch him. And it means something that she’s trusting him right now.

“They’re gonna be okay, Jemma,” he says softly. “They’re both conscious, they’ve had worse.”

She pushes away from him, messy for an instant. “They keep hurting _my_ people,” she says thickly - and he realizes, finally, that she’s not sad, she’s not scared. She’s furious. “They’re going to pay for all of it. I’m going to destroy that thing,” she says with conviction.

Her strength riles something within him. He takes a step forward, so close. “Yes, you are.”

It’s like a fucking summer storm, warm and electrical. If he doesn’t break out of it soon, they’re going to do something regrettable. He disengages.

“Is it fucked up to say that I like your rage?”

Surprised, she lets out a little laugh. And then she says the best thing she could possibly say.

“Aren’t you used to being fucked up by now?”

 

 

 

Finally, finally, finally, Grant has the monster pinned, and It’s not getting out this time. It lets out a long keen, drawn to wordlessness as the human body it stole starts to die.

“What are you doing, Ward?” Coulson barks through the comms. “End it!”

Grant ignores him. “Simmons, you better get your ass down here.”

“Twenty seconds,” she shoots back in his ear. He counts down as he wrestles with the dying thing, and there she is like clockwork, precise as always, bursting through the door with the honest-to-god flamethrower that she and Fitz modified.

“The one who escaped,” the dying thing hisses at her. “I’ve been waiting—”

“Would you just _shut up_?” Jemma growls. It’s tried this speech a couple of times, and Jemma finds it boring now. Which Grant finds adorable.

“NOW,” Coulson roars in their ears. Grant takes his knife and runs it along the body’s jugular. They’ve failed enough times now to know that Maveth can’t hide in the body after it’s rendered unusable. So when the thing slithers out, Grant dives out of the way and Jemma flips the switch on her device, dousing the room in flames.

Maveth makes a tortured sound, unlike anything belonging to this Earth. And Jemma’s smiling through it.

“We gotta move,” Grant shouts into his comm. “This place will be burned to a crisp in 90 seconds.”

Jemma’s not moving, though; Jemma still has the flamethrower on, still staring at the spasming mass on the floor, waiting to see death with her own eyes one more time.

“Jemma, please, we have to go.”

She doesn’t respond, and honestly, Grant can check on her mental state later; so he flips the flamethrower off, and pulls her along with him, up the stairs, through the carnage-wracked farmhouse, flames on their heels.

 

 

 

“You froze a little bit back there,” he says later. She is hyper-aware of the fact that he’s sitting on her bed. This isn’t normal, but today hasn’t been normal. “What were you thinking about?”

“I was thinking the universe can go bugger itself,” she says.

“Be serious.”

“I am being serious,” she assures. “I don’t believe in fate, I don’t believe in a guiding hand. I don’t believe _everything happens for a reason_. Evil isn’t destiny, it’s a choice. And failure has to be avoidable. It’s not inevitable that we defeated the monster. It happened because we chose not to stop.”

She takes a big breath, lets it out slowly. The gash on her cheek aches when she talks.

“The monolith took me because that’s what it does. Will found me because he chose to believe I was real. I saved you from Maveth because I wanted to. I refuse to believe that I’m not in control of my life.”

“Jemma,” he says. It comes out a little breathy, and for a minute she worries about the smoke from the fire hurting his lungs. “You’re wrong.”

Oh. “Excuse me?”

He laughs a little. “I mean, you’re not entirely wrong. You’re right about all of it, actually, except the idea that you’re in control of your life.”

This is rich, coming from him. “Please do elaborate,” she goads, mercurial mood lost to his gentle prodding.

“You can control your own choices, yes, but you can’t control every aspect of your life, because you’re always going to be surrounded by people who make their own choices for their own reasons.”

“You can choose the people you surround yourself with,” Jemma argues.

“So you’ve never had a coworker who annoyed you? Or a classmate that you didn’t like but you had to work with?”

“You annoy me,” she deflects, because she’s just realized he’s right.

“Fair enough,” he says, and then she’s mad at herself for saying it.

“It’s not like I don’t know that people intervene in your life and take choices away from you,” Jemma says, very serious now. “You did that. To all of us.”

She watches as he swallows very hard, nodding softly. He’s ashamed.

“But what am I supposed to do?” She continues. “Just give up? Let some cosmic force that doesn’t even exist make all of my decisions for me, so I don’t ever feel any blame?”

All of a sudden she realizes that he’s started to smile at her.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says. “You’re incredible.”

“I know that,” she deflects again.

“You take on too much blame, you know _that_ , right?” he says next.

“Who’s to say?”

“Literally everyone who’s known you for more than five minutes.”

Her voice is very small when it comes out. “I don’t know why I feel like this. I don’t know how to make it stop.”

“You could try listening to us every once in a while.” And he grins.

“But I’m so much smarter than you, Grant. It’s so hard,” she whines.

He keeps grinning.

 

 

 

The first night after they move Ward out of the Vault and into his own bunk, he doesn’t actually sleep there.

Honestly, Jemma’s not so sure how it starts – one moment they’re talking and the next she’s got a hand on each of his cheeks and is pulling him forward. And then he’s meeting her tender kisses with a gentleness she wasn’t even sure he had, hesitant in his head but not in the core of his body. He’s being very careful, she thinks; not because he thinks she might break, but because she might run away.

Obviously, this isn’t going to be easy. It doesn’t make a shred of logical sense. And she can’t control if he turns around tomorrow and tries to hurt her again. But—

He pulls just the tiniest bit away. “This is—this is real, okay? I promise this is real.”

She locks her arms around him a little bit tighter and gets back to business.

And when his hands travel down to squeeze her ass, caution abandoned—well, that’s when she figures that, at least for tonight, everything’s going to be just fine.

 


End file.
